Buzz marketing, throughout its brief history, has been characterised by constantly shifting parameters. After all, when a marketing form tries to capture the human imagination or social zeitgeist it’s bound to be hard to pin it down to hard and fast rules. Whilst there are “guides” to the art of the buzz none of them can really offer more than a study (albeit an in-depth one) of the theories behind the actions in a word of mouth campaign – and we shouldn’t expect any more. By its very nature viral marketing (as an aside all the terms used so far – buzz, word of mouth and viral – refer to the same discipline) is an art that delivers more knowledge through observation and practice than it can through book-learned theory.Buzz marketing, throughout its brief history, has been characterised by constantly shifting parameters. After all, when a marketing form tries to capture the human imagination or social zeitgeist it’s bound to be hard to pin it down to hard and fast rules. Whilst there are “guides” to the art of the buzz none of them can really offer more than a study (albeit an in-depth one) of the theories behind the actions in a word of mouth campaign – and we shouldn’t expect any more. By its very nature viral marketing (as an aside all the terms used so far – buzz, word of mouth and viral – refer to the same discipline) is an art that delivers more knowledge through observation and practice than it can through book-learned theory.